


Take Me Home

by shetlandowl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: All victims are young gay men (i.e. this story includes crimes targeting/by LGBT community), Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternative Universe - FBI, Drugs - both good and bad, Fluff and Humor, Getting Back Together, Happy Ending, Hospitalization, Kidnapping, M/M, Mentions of violent sexual crimes including murder but nothing graphic, Minor Angst, Mutual Pining, shopping adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 07:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20327191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: Natasha and her team are at a dead end with a case that's too important to give up on, so she reaches out to an old friend. An old friend who Steve never expected to see again.





	Take Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for the following three prompts: 
> 
> thestarkymechanic asked: Stony prompt- genius criminal profiler Tony and his team help police chief Steve catch a killer? They butt heads at first but it’s all UST ;)
> 
> @main-for-avengersandco said: ummmm…. how about some sort of first time shopping adventure as a prompt
> 
> @greatkingunderthemountain said: Hi! How bout tony teaching Steve about how to kiss and such…depending on what you do even more like sex and such
> 
> Title taken from song by Jack Savoretti.

  
**Tony**  


The elevator doors pinged open on the twelfth floor unnoticed. Santa himself could have entered the precinct to rub his existence in everybody’s noses and not a single detective would have seen him coming. Some detectives were occupied with interrogations and a handful of others divided their attention between their phones and taking notes, while most were on the move. It was nearly five o’clock, and they had places to go and paperwork to file before admins left for the day.

Tony strode in with the confidence of a man who knew exactly where he was going. Not that it was difficult to locate his target: he only needed to follow the shouting everyone else was ignoring. By some unspoken yet unanimous agreement, the whole precinct decided to turn a deaf ear to the four detectives shouting themselves hoarse in the conference room and leave them to their own devices. 

All except Tony, of course, who cut a clear path through the bullpen to the conference room and stood on the threshold to announce himself with a loud knock on the open door.

“We got this room ‘til five!” Sam called without looking up, while Steve automatically turned to march on the door with every intention of slamming it shut on someone’s toes, until he realized who that someone was. 

“Tony?”

Steve’s anger morphed into shock and more anger before Tony’s eyes. Still, he couldn’t help but stare. All at once he was reminded of how badly he’d missed Steve - missed how disheveled he could get when deep in a case; missed that special streak of (stubborn) defiance that fueled him through impossible cases no-one else believed in. It wasn’t Tony’s fault - Steve looked even sexier when he was pissed, with his clenching jaw and his biceps flexing in anticipation of a brawl. 

Steve, on the other hand, seemed less taken by Tony’s unexpected appearance. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

The three detectives behind him stopped what they were doing and looked up. Tony glanced at them all in turns of quiet acknowledge, until his gaze fell on Natasha and lingered there. 

Steve looked like he didn’t know whether to sigh, glower, or rub at the fresh headache growing behind his eyes first. Instead, he followed Tony’s line of sight to his own partner. 

“I called him,” Natasha said before Steve had to ask. “Steve, you said it yourself: they’re four dead runaways over two years; no-one’s taking it seriously. We need his help. Maybe he can connect enough dots to convince the Captain that this is a case.”

“Give me one week,” Tony said in the pregnant silence left by Steve’s lack of an answer. “Four gay men are gone, Steve. In our city. Let me help.” 

Steve turned back to him in a flash, stone-faced. “There is no _ ours _ anymore,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re the one who moved to Virginia.”

Despite his attempt to keep his composure, Tony’s lips thinned in a sudden flash of anger. “For six months, _ like I told you— _”

“Aren’t you a Fed now?” Sam said to interrupt the brewing fight. “Even if we wanted to, this isn’t your jurisdiction anymore.”

“Off the clock. Call me a consultant,” Tony said, a touch calmer. “Steve, whoever this is, he’s escalating and you don’t even know his motives. Eight to ten months between each of the first three victims, now four months between the last two? If he hasn’t crossed state lines yet, it’s only a matter of time. You need me.”

The jut of Steve’s jaw said everything. He knew his back was against the wall; he knew this was bigger than himself. This was bigger than his ex. 

“Fine,” he eventually conceded. “But we do it my way and on my terms. Is that clear?”

Without any fanfare or sarcasm, Tony finally crossed the threshold and joined the team in the conference room. “Fine. I need a computer and coffee.”

*** 

Besides the fact that the four victims were all young, attractive men interested in other men, there was little else that connected them. One was a part-time service attendant at a car wash who lived a closeted life at home with his parents, until he’d disappeared eight months ago. The next victim was an extroverted bartender at a grungy gay club in Harlem, until he, too, disappeared without a trace. Their remains had been found recently in the city, and written off as the inevitable end for queer runaway kids. 

The third victim was the one who’d finally convinced Steve that this was all a bigger case. He’d been a quiet philosophy student at Columbia University, a privileged young man with a clear plan in life, whom his friends described as someone who only pulled his nose out of books twice a week to practice Capoeira. He’d been missing for almost ten months until a few weeks ago, when his remains were found behind his old apartment building. 

The third victim was as far from a runaway as you could get, and after some digging through the backlog of closed unsolved cases of dead runaways, Steve and Natasha identified the first two victims as part of the pattern. It wasn’t as simple as a killer who left a calling card, or an easily identifiable method. The victims were all killed with a single cut across the throat, then undressed and scrubbed clean for some unsuspecting dog walker to find. 

The only thing that connected these victims was that their bodies were found soon after their death, even though they’d been missing for much, much longer. It supported the runaway theory - kids who ran away from their responsibilities and bills, or homophobic families, only to be found in the gutter once their luck ran out. 

The fourth and most recent victim was an older man who’d been reported missing from his hourly job at a custodial service four months prior. Steve and Natasha asked the Captain to put them on the case immediately. Carter had been on their side initially, and even let them bring Bucky and Sam onboard, but as weeks without leads turned to months, she grew less supportive of their flimsy serial killer theory.

Tony, on the other hand, absorbed everything they said without disagreement. He had plenty of comments and alternative interpretations to offer, but not once did he waver in his agreement that these cases were most likely connected. By the time they were all ready to call it a night, Tony had turned their informed hunches and scant, hard-earned facts into a plausible lead. 

“This is either going to sound crazy or cliche,” Tony warned them before he turned the laptop around with the lid nearly closed. “They were all young, attractive. All single. No signs of sexual assault,” he added, because it needed to be said, “but I think sex had a lot to do with this.”

“Are you going to make us guess?” Barnes asked dryly.

Tony continued without so much as acknowledging him. “I got into Preston’s university email and found his personal account,” he said, referring to the third victim, then finally opened the laptop to reveal what was clearly a dating site profile page. 

“At the time of his disappearance, he was a current member of Gay Arrangement dot com. According to his account history, he described himself as a sugar baby looking for a sugar daddy to, and I quote: ‘guide his professional development, fund his tasteful lifestyle, and help him refine and control his unbridled passion.’”

“Who isn’t?” Natasha rhetorically wondered, while Sam crossed his arms over his chest and, with a little less sympathy, muttered, “Who isn’t?”

“You think this is their connection?” Steve asked dubiously. Online dating was fast becoming the norm, as were the countless social fail-safes friends used to keep each other safe. “You think they were all looking for sugar daddies?”

“Why not? They’re young and attractive, they have low-paying jobs in an expensive city that caters to the wealthy,” Tony reasoned. “If you can get your hands on their membership data going back two and a half years, I’ll put together a program to search for the other victims. They use made-up nicknames on the website, I can’t search for them by their real name or their emails.”

They all knew him well enough to know he _ could _ break into GayArrangements.com to dig through their membership records, but without the necessary paperwork legally allowing them to do so, none of it would hold up in court. The last thing they needed was to build a case borne of the poisoned tree. 

“Does Preston’s account keep a record of his matches?” Bucky wondered, “or maybe their conversations?”

Tony spun the laptop around to confirm what he remembered before answering. “It keeps a record of everyone with whom he still has a mutual connection, but I’ll dig and see if the company has a log of matches where either or both of them unmatched.”

“What about their conversations?” Bucky reminded him, and Steve sat up a little straighter, as if Bucky’s question sparked an idea for him. 

“If you’re right and the other victims also had accounts on this website, would it be possible to compare all of their matched connections to see if they have shared matches?”

“Absolutely,” Tony promised. He’d meant to say more, maybe boast a little about how that wasn’t all he could do given the right data, but his words caught in his throat when Steve’s lips turned up in a hesitant but hopeful smile. It was the first time in the past seven months that anything Tony had said or done made Steve smile.

Luckily, Steve had already turned back to his notes on his own laptop, so he was the only one around the table who missed the way Tony openly mooned over him, deeply fond and miserably crestfallen at the same time. 

“There’s gotta be a dozen of these websites,” Sam said in the awkward tension - in part to break it up, and in part because he felt the theory was a little crazy in its scope. “You really think they’d all be here?”

“It’s the first website that pops up when you Google gay sugar daddy,” Tony said, his words slowing the more he thought about the complication Sam brought up. “I’ll see if Preston was a past or current member on other services.”

“They won’t let us fish around in their membership data without good cause, not with their elite clientele,” Steve sighed, scrubbing his hands over tired eyes. Once he’d regrouped, he stole a quick, instinctive glance at his partner before turning back to Tony. “If you can connect any of the victims to these other websites, I’ll get a warrant for their data.”

“And then what?”

The four men turned as one to look at Natasha with varying looks of confusion, interest, and fatigue. 

“Say Tony’s right: we get all the data we need and they’re all there. We’re still working with two years of dating history. What are the chances that they only have one match in common?”

“Bait!” Tony suggested while the rest of them were still processing the question. “I can set up a profile that resembles the victims’ profiles, and you’ll - we’ll need someone to be sugar baby bait. Someone who can go on first dates and use them as an interrogation. Do you have any young men in the department who could do it?”

“Captain Carter’s not gonna sink more detective hours into this,” Natasha said, “it’s only us.”

“I’ll do it,” Steve said before anyone had a chance to brainstorm alternatives. 

Sam’s mouth twisted in an expression of doubt, but it was Bucky who voiced it. 

“Aren’t you… you know, too big?” he asked, a sentiment Sam seconded by saying, “You got more muscles than any of the victims.”

“Sugar babies can be muscular,” Tony said, a touch defensive, but it was Natasha who shrugged their concerns off the best. 

“Flattering angles, good filters,” she said, counting off the three hallmarks of online dating pictures. “And when all else fails: Photoshop.”

Tony watched Steve carefully, but for all he could tell, Steve was rolling with the punches without batting an eye. If anything, he looked determined to get the plan going. 

“Tony, see what else you can get from Preston’s computer,” Steve said since the silence spoke of their shared agreement (or lack of alternative plans). “Sam, Buck: first thing tomorrow, get a warrant for GayArrangement’s membership data, then go talk to Preston’s parents. See if you can learn anything about his past relationships. Nat and I’ll visit Preston’s university friends and his roommate again, see if we they’ve got anything to say about past relationships and, I don’t know—money, gifts, fancy clothes —whatever else sugar daddies do.”

“A lot of them groom their sugar babies for lucrative careers,” Tony told the group as the rest of them got to their feet and started to pack up for the night. “Ask about internships or jobs that sound too good to be true.”

“Sure,” Steve said as he pulled his jacket on, a little distracted. “And you’ll let us know the minute you find anything?”

“You got it.”

Natasha clapped Tony on the shoulder on her way out and wished them all a good night. 

“Where the hell were these sugar daddies when I was in college?” Sam muttered to himself, and his partner huffed in wry amusement as they both wished Steve and Tony a good night and followed Natasha out. 

While they were all getting ready to go home, Tony turned back to the computer and got back to work. Work distracted him well enough that it took him a minute to realize Steve hadn’t left with the others, and he still hovered idly while doing his level best not to look at him. 

“What is it?” Tony asked, nipping this uncomfortable, shitty feeling in the bud. “Go home, Steve. You’ve been at this all day. I’m fine, I had a late start.”

“It’s 1 AM, Tony. Pace yourself, this isn’t a sprint,” Steve said, his mouth twisting awkwardly. 

Only a year ago, Steve would’ve coaxed and teased Tony to let go, to come home and fall into bed with him. A year ago, nobody would have worried more about Tony’s sleep and mental health than Steve, just like there was nothing Tony wouldn’t do to protect Steve and his happiness. 

It seemed old habits died hard after all. 

“Not for you. I’m only here a week,” Tony reminded him gently. The more appeased Steve was with the situation, the easier he would sleep at night. It was the least Tony could do. “I’ll do what I can with these data, then I’ll get some rest while you’re all questioning Preston’s friends and family.”

He could practically see the tired, sluggish wheels turning in Steve’s look until he finally gave in. “Alright. Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, quietly. “Good night.”

Tony, who had hoped for another miraculous smile, quickly pressed his own lips together before he looked like a fool. “You bet,” he managed through what had so nearly been a wishful smile of his own. “Good night, Steve.”

  
**Steve**  


Steve would never admit it, but after seeing Tony again, time started passing quicker than he would have liked. 

By the second day, Sam and Bucky not only got the right paperwork signed, but they badgered GayArrangements executives to the point that they sent Tony all the necessary data before lunchtime. Using the algorithms he’d developed the night before, Tony (1) identified accounts that were plausible matches to the other victims, then (2) pulled all respective matches of the four victims and (3) cross-referenced them to generate a comprehensive list of the sugar daddies that all four victims matched with (regardless of whether either of them unmatched later). 

Rationally, Steve knew Tony had worked hard through the night to create a highly customized tool that compressed days worth of police work into seconds of computer processing. He knew Tony’d most likely made several alternative versions of the same program to accommodate different forms of data, since he hadn’t known what they’d exactly receive. His creation was, for all intents and purposes, an educated guess.

It just happened that Tony was a genius. Whether he was an FDA Certified Grassfed Genius with a current Mensa membership card glued to the back of his license was beyond Steve, but he knew that Tony’s ‘most educated guess’ was better than what the average person hoped to achieve in a lifetime. And now, in less than 48 hours, he was back to break Steve’s heart by reminding him of whose affection he’d lost and why Steve admired him as deeply as he did. 

During their twenty-two month relationship, Steve enjoyed the coveted front row seat to Tony’s dogged dedication to his work, to doing right by the victims and their families, and - in the end - landing the opportunity of a lifetime with the FBI. They’d been comfortably between the ‘drawer at his place’ and ‘meeting the parents’ relationship milestones when Tony moved to Virginia. 

He promised they only required six months of him. He would come back to New York then, one way or another. He promised he’d come back for Steve.

Except all Steve heard was his blind promise to turn down future opportunities for the sake of their relationship. What if they wanted Tony to stay at Quantico, or move to D.C.? If the FBI was what he really wanted, then Steve couldn’t be the reason Tony turned anything down. Even if Tony never grew to resent him, Steve would resent himself for holding back the man he loved. 

He gave Tony an ultimatum: stay in New York with Steve, or move to Virginia and make the most of his chance with the Feds. 

Tony left without a backward glance. 

That first night, once the shock and anger and pain of seeing him so unexpectedly subsided, Steve lost hours of sleep wondering why Tony had come back. A man like him could have gone anywhere and become anything, so what was he doing in New York? More importantly: had he really come back after only six months, shared the same streets and delis and Grindr ‘dating’ pool as Steve without Steve ever knowing it? Did Tony live with someone now, someone Steve didn’t know and who kept a toothbrush next to Tony’s, or maybe even had spare keys to Tony’s place? 

(Was there a friendly, non-romantic way to ask without giving Tony the wrong impression? Was there a friendly, non-romantic way to ask Tony if he wanted to get a drink, or if he was interested in coming around to Steve’s place to see whether the memory foam mattress still remembered him? Because Steve sure did.)

“Steve, did you hear what I said?”

Steve startled back to the present and forced his attention back on Tony and Natasha. “Sorry, something just came to me,” he lied, even though his ex and his partner were the last people to fall for it. He wasn’t even sure which of them had spoken a second ago. “Can you say that again?”

“I said using the two other victims’ profiles on GayArrangement, we’ve got a total of fifty-two shared sugar daddy matches,” Tony said in a tone that made it clear he knew Steve had spaced out in the middle of their discussion. “I sent Barnes and Wilson the evidence of Thorne’s memberships with Seeking and Sudy in the given timeframe,” he added, referring to the first victim whose profile he’d found on GayArrangement. “The system is ready to append, but I think there’s enough overlap in what we already have to draft your profile to match the killer’s preferences. Did you and Romanov get any pictures for the site?”

Natasha shook her head, while Steve tried to will away a blush. “Um, no,” he said, glancing at his partner. “We can take some now?”

“Now?” Tony echoed dubiously, and behind him, Natasha’s brows climbed up her forehead in surprise. “Did you pack nicer clothes with you?”

“Nicer clothes?” Steve couldn’t help but blurt out. He looked down at himself and picked at his perfectly good button-up in genuine confusion. When did slacks and a collared shirt become the wrong choice? “What’s wrong with my clothes?”

“You need to look the part,” Tony sighed impatiently, as if how to ‘look the part’ was information Steve should already know via default gay factory settings. Were sugar babies universally allergic to grey slacks and he was the last to know? 

“Sugar babies are trophies, Steve: beautiful, enviable accessories to drape on your arm from time to time. You need to show off, flaunt a little, look like you know how to enjoy the finer things in life. You won’t do any of that in clothes you bought at the GAP.”

“It’s Banana Republic,” Steve tried in his own defense. They only looked more disappointed in him. 

“Fine, whatever. I’ll—why don’t I see what I’ve got at home, I can be back in—”

“No: why don’t _ I _ write up his dating profile,” Natasha said to Tony as if Steve wasn’t qualified to take part in the discussion anymore. “Your notes are clear and I have the other profiles as guides. You take him shopping.”

“Shopping? No,” Steve protested outright. “Something I’ve got at home will work.”

“Does he still fit in Bucky’s clothes?” Tony wondered, ignoring Steve and directing his question to Natasha. “He wears smart clothes sometimes.”

Natasha shook her head without an ounce of regret. “Not since he became a pescatarian.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with my clothes,” Steve told them, a touch peevish, though he was more irritated by the cryptic look of understanding that passed between his ex and his partner (and blatantly excluded him). 

“You sound like you know what to look for, Stark,” Natasha said coolly, pointedly stepping back from the desk to urge Tony out of his chair. “I’ll call you if we get more data today.”

For a second, Steve watched with morbid satisfaction as Tony blinked up at Natasha before finally acknowledging him again. Steve’s vindictive streak had no chance against those big brown eyes when they cried ‘put me out of my misery’ as easily as ‘please choose me.’ Even before they were dating, that look would’ve had Steve clapping him on the shoulder or pulling his friend in for a firm hug. He’d have done anything to smother Tony’s inexplicable fear that his friends don’t actually enjoy his company or his exceptional mind. 

Just because things were complicated didn’t mean Steve couldn’t extend an olive branch. 

“Let’s go, Tony. Guess you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Steve said with a wry smile, grabbing his jacket and fishing out the car keys to be sure they were set. “I’ll drive.”

*** 

“Who in their right mind pays a hundred and twenty dollars for socks?”

“We’re not here for socks,” Tony reminded him, unfazed by the clear injustice of capitalism. “Just let me know if you like something so I can stay clear of it.”

Steve’s lips twisted in a snarl that was more of a pout, but he trailed after Tony dutifully for lack of a better option. Tony seemed to have a plan, and he’d jumped into the worst of it first: foundations, aka underwear. 

“Fifty dollars for a jockstrap?” Steve muttered to himself as he inspected something garish and glittery (a description he’d only now learned wasn’t inherently redundant). Whoever Neiman Marcus was, he clearly was out to personally offend him. “It won’t even hold an avocado.”

“It, what?” Tony looked up and shot him a pained look. “It’s not meant to hold an avocado, Steve. Put it down. It’s been five minutes, I can’t do this with you: stop helping.”

Steve stepped away from the delicate, artfully folded underwear and did his level best to ignore where he was. Unfortunately, he wasn’t great at multitasking. 

“This store is why normal, hard-working people hate the one percent.”

“This store is not where the one percent shop,” Tony replied in a tired voice, not bothering to look away from what he was doing anymore. “This is where the people who aspire to one day approach the one percent shop.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but he kept his mouth shut. He was doing fine until he got bored enough to forget Tony’s earlier request and again started poking around at the underwear displays they passed. 

“This feels nice,” he admitted, rubbing at the end of a pair of silk boxers. “Not worth one eighty-five, but it’s nice.”

Tony perked up and craned his neck to see from the table he was at, then, seemingly convinced it wasn’t a total waste, he came over with his own small armful of acceptable options to personally inspect what Steve had found. 

“Grab it,” he said after a few seconds of consideration. “It’d be a good signal that you know what you’re doing.”

“A good signal that I do what?” Steve drawled. “That I’d rather wear silk than buy groceries?”

“Oh my god, we haven’t even gotten to the shoes yet,” Tony moaned through gritted teeth, then took a deep breath and tried again. In his most reasonable, rational voice, he said, “Remember why we’re doing this, Steve: there’s a man - or a group of men - out there, taking advantage of young men’s dreams in order to _ murder them ._”

“I know, but somewhere I missed the chapter about why we can’t call in everyone on your list and interrogate them,” Steve couldn’t help but argue, especially now that he was staring down the barrel of a three-thousand dollar wardrobe makeover. “Wouldn’t that be more efficient?”

Tony let out a tired sigh, but when he spoke again, he sounded more understanding than Steve expected. “Listen, these people are in a closely knit, elite network. They are smart, they have extensive resources; homes in multiple countries, and ways to get the hell out of dodge within hours. Maybe we can get away with pulling one of them without raising flags, but multiple? They’ll disappear, they’ll change up their MO. And if there are more victims?” he added more quietly, “We might never know.”

Whether Tony was right or not, Steve agreed that it sounded far too plausible to be worth the risk. He looked back at the silk Tom Ford boxers, thumbed at the hem again before looking through the stack for his size. 

“Let’s take two,” he decided, grabbing one in black and one in charcoal grey. “Just in case.”

*** 

By the time they got back to the precinct five hours later, Steve felt like a walking billboard for every pretentious brand name under the sun. From the Magnanni shoes that cost six hundred dollars and Tony called ‘mid-range chic,’ to the Burberry wool coat that apparently told the world he was ‘trying just hard enough,’ Steve was so far out of his comfort zone that any bump against a desk and every dusty-looking chair put the fear of the Lord in him. What was a man to do if he got ketchup on pants that were on sale for three hundred dollars?

“You look uncomfortable,” Sam told Steve the minute he got a good look at him. “But you look good.”

“You look expensive,” Bucky said, with a disapproving look that Steve wholeheartedly approved of. 

“You don’t know the half of it; there’s tons more in the car,” Steve confided his existential dismay to his best friend before turning to his partner. “Are we ready?”

“I printed out examples of photographs other sugar babies used, and even got you your own photographer,” Natasha said with a self-satisfied smirk, gesturing across the bullpen to where one of their better forensic photographers was chatting up a junior detective. 

Steve didn’t have the energy to be shocked anymore. He needed pictures, so why not have a guy who filmed cadavers and crime scenes do it for him? That made perfect sense. At least he’d be a subject who still had his pulse; maybe Barton would like that for a change of pace. 

Tony, though, seemed less convinced. “You think you’ll be able to make do-me eyes at Barton?”

“I think you mean doe-eyes,” Steve corrected primly, then dropped the act with a shrug and a resigned half-smile. “Who knows? I’ll pretend he’s Jack Savoretti.”

“Right. Sure,” Tony agreed agreeably, not unlike how Steve had agreed to hand over his credit card in the too-recent past. He turned to their grinning audience of three with a pointedly serious look. “Got anything for me to do?”

“Sudy’s data came in twenty minutes ago,” Bucky said, the first of them all to recover his relative professionalism. “The Seeking people are dragging their feet. They pushed back with some demand about warning their clients that their personal information would be shared with the police.”

“That’s obstruction,” Steve said without thinking, not that Bucky was bothered by his interruption. 

“Believe me, we told them.”

“I’ll follow up with them,” Tony told them, already shrugging out of his jacket to take his seat. “You got the profile ready?” he asked Natasha.

“In your email,” she said, while Sam chimed in to say, “It was a group effort.”

“Even better.” 

Tony’s lips curved up with a smile, a private little thing that caught Steve’s attention easier than sunshine on a cloudy day. He could feel his neck warming with a blush; even if it was at his expense, Steve couldn’t help but feel a tug of primal excitement thinking that Tony was smiling about _ him_ . In answer to a question he’d never thought to ask himself, his libido clearly didn’t care that Tony’s interest in this moment was about Steve’s fake dating profile designed to catch a serial killer - it only mattered that Tony still had an interest in Steve’s anything. 

“You’re still here?”

For the second time that day, Steve startled out of his tumbling thoughts and blinked around himself to see who had spoken. 

“Barton’s waiting,” Natasha reminded him. “We got this, Steve. We’ll start pulling basics on the sugar daddies Tony’s already found, and Tony’s handling the data.”

“Alright,” Steve cleared his throat. “None of you stay later than you must today. I don’t have a good feeling about the next few days.”

“Probably cause you’re dressed like a dude who owns peacocks,” Sam pointed out, but Steve only gave him a flat look. 

“I mean it,” Steve said in a flinty tone that brooked no argument. “Stay sharp. See you tomorrow.”

  
**Tony**  


By the end of his consultancy, Tony could confidently say he’d done everything he set out to do. Once the other websites got with the program, Tony had the data necessary to make a solid case for their theory - enough so that Captain Carter agreed to back their play. Most importantly, he gave them six viable suspects: six sugar daddies that the four victims all met within the weeks leading to their disappearances. 

The Captain gave them the power to pull officers as needed to provide Steve backup on his ‘dates’, and also assigned a profiler to their team to step in after Tony left. As much as he hated leaving, Tony could admit that despite his first (and second) (and third) impression, Scott Lang surprised him. He spent thirty minutes reviewing Tony’s notes and another hour poring over the data before arriving at a similar conclusion: they were after an insecure man with a fragile ego. A loner in the crowd, a man who thrived on attention and admiration from his peers without any interest or investments in meaningful social connections. Likely a middle-aged man with a wealthy family whose insecurity stemmed from familial comparisons, such as more successful parents, siblings, or cousins, who used attractive sugar babies as quick means of being envied by his peers. 

Until they weren’t enough, of course. Once their ability to maintain the positive attention among his peers waned, his sugar babies became the scapegoats for his restored insecurities.

In the two weeks since he’d returned to his own job, Tony rarely heard from his old team (his old family). The most substantial update he got was a text from Sam thanking him for pooling the phrases, word choices, and patterns of speech that the sugar babies used to communicate with their prospective daddies. It wasn’t easy reeling in highly-sought sugar daddies, and like everyone else, each daddy had his own preferences. For people like Natasha, Bucky, and Sam the mannerisms and flirting style of sugar babies might as well have been in Greek. With Tony’s bank of introductory messages, flirty innuendos, and witty remarks that served to show intelligence without being intimidating, they had some scaffolding to get them started. 

A knock on his door late one Tuesday evening brought his tenuous return to normalcy to a grinding halt. Tony pulled himself together, grabbed the taser sitting on the side-table by the door, and opened the door with the security chain on. 

Natasha waited on the other side of the door. She held up a case of his favorite beer, signaling a semi-casual visit. “Got some time for an old friend?”

Tony rolled his eyes, but he closed the door and flicked the chain off so he could step back and let her in. “Should I fear for my life?” he asked, only half-joking. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“You upgraded,” Natasha observed instead as she took in his new apartment. It was substantially bigger than the one-bedroom hole Tony once shared with Steve in the Lower East Side. Back then they barely paid attention to decor and design; they worked long hours and preferred to come home to their shared, comfortably familiar mess. Now, Tony had new, stylish furniture, living plants, and big windows with floor-length curtains that brought the large living room together with a refined, stately touch. 

“Just here to snoop around, then?” Tony guessed out loud. He carried the beers to the fridge after plucking two bottles out for them, giving her the time to do a circuit of the open-floor plan. 

“We were thinking of you today, I wanted to say hello,” she explained absently, moderately distracted by the lives playing out in the apartment windows across from them. Eventually she grew disinterested and joined Tony on the couches where an opened bottle already waited for her. 

Tony’s lips curved up with a hint of a smile, but he took a drink of his beer and didn’t say anything. 

“Bucky’s been scary-good at the sugar baby talk, you’d be proud,” she said after a pull from her drink. “I never thanked you for taking time off to help us.”

“And you still haven’t,” Tony pointed out, though he shrugged it off just as easily. “How’s the case going?” 

“We got three daddies on the hook, Steve had his first dates Sunday and today. You should see him now, he’s lost a lot of bulk these past two weeks. He looks like a budget Ryan Reynolds in the right light.”

Tony choked on his beer and just barely got his hand over his mouth before he sprayed it over his couch. “You,” he croaked out, struggling to cough and breathe through the giggle fit that sent his beer down the wrong pipe. “That—_budget_ Ryan Reynolds, I can’t—”

“With any luck we’ll have five of them by the end of the week. One guy isn’t responding to anything yet, we’ll bring him on something else next week if we have to.”

“It’s working out, good,” Tony managed, clearing his throat one last time. “How’s he doing on the dates?”

“The first guy took him to some charity event at an art museum, so—”

“Let me guess: Steve owned the room.” 

“And helped his sugar daddy’s team win the art history trivia at the end of the night.”

“Sounds like you’ve locked one down,” Tony said with a quiet sense of pride. “The others?”

“Not as memorable, but they’re interested in second dates. We count them as wins,” she summarized. It sounded simple, but Natasha fell quiet then, mulling something over with care. Tony didn’t push, giving her the time and space to find her words. 

“The daddy today mentioned traveling,” she eventually said. “Slachter. He works in San Francisco and wants a baby who’s flexible enough for his lifestyle. Something about it… let’s say it caught my attention.”

It could be nothing, but if Tony was a betting man, he’d never bet against Natasha’s instincts. If it caught her attention, it was as good as a red flag for him. “Send me his details, I’ll run it through flight records. Won’t take five minutes.”

“Without a warrant it’s inadmissible,” she replied, though between the satisfied smirk and calm tone made it clear she wasn’t warning Tony so much as asking him for a suggested loophole. 

“If his flights match the pattern of disappearances and TODs, I’ll get you a list of places he’s been to,” Tony waved off Natasha’s perfectly reasonable point. “Let Steve ask him about the same destinations on their dates; any indication that he’s traveled to and from the city in your time frame, you’ll have enough to pull his travel records.” 

Just because it wasn’t above board didn’t mean it wouldn’t work. People did worse for less. 

“Thanks, Stark,” Natasha said and got up from the couch, clearly done with her visit. “You’re always worth the price of imported beer.”

“If I ever get married, you’re giving the first toast,” Tony called after her and watched her go. 

She was gone for thirty seconds when from across the room Steve threw the curtain aside in indignant outrage. “_Budget Ryan Reynolds!?_”

Laughter punched out of Tony all over again, but this time he thankfully wasn’t drinking. 

“She couldn’t even compare me to an American?” Steve groused to himself on his way back to Tony’s couch, where Tony was still delighting in the tragic comparison. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

Tony pressed his lips together in a mockery of stifling his laughter; he had no sincere interest in cutting short his giggling joy until Steve sunk into the couch beside him and quieted him with a soft, unhurried kiss that left Tony moaning his change of heart. 

“Unforgivable,” he murmured in agreement against Steve’s wet lips. “You should take off your shirt so I can see how wrong she is.”

“I thought we said we’d take it slow?”

“It’s been ten days. Ten days of dressing you for dates with other men. Ten days listening in on you charming them through interrogations… you don’t know how hot that makes me,” Tony whispered on a longing sigh, brushing his fingers over the buttons on Steve’s dress shirt. Thirty minutes ago, Tony had wriggled five of those bad boys free, but Steve had clearly done them back up while in hiding behind the curtain. 

After so much time apart, the excitement of undressing Steve was on par with how badly Tony missed him, full stop. He didn’t want ‘newly unfamiliar’ anymore, he was tired of ‘reacquainting touches.’ Steve had been an extension of himself in the same way that Tony understood what he meant with the simplest look or gesture. He wanted his partner back.

Steve wetted his lips again, eyeing Tony with no less interest than Tony felt with every buzzing nerve in his body. “What if it’s not the same?”

“It won’t be. It can’t be,” Tony conceded quietly, instinctively curling his fingers into Steve’s soft shirt in case he tried to pull away. When Steve didn’t try to distance himself, Tony dared to glance up from his tempting lips to hold his gaze as he slowly drew him closer. 

“You’re a stranger I still love, Steve,” he confessed on a soft breath. “Kiss me so I can know you again.”

Steve went willingly as Tony reeled him in, melting into him with a gentle, tentative kiss. A delirious smile overtook Tony but he didn’t let it stop him from opening to Steve’s kiss, moaning softly in encouragement. He eased back into the couch until the full weight of Steve’s body pressed him into the firm cushions and Tony could bend his legs around Steve’s body to cradle him between his thighs. Steve’s hips jerked up instinctively under the familiar squeeze of Tony’s legs, grinding his growing erection against Tony’s until he caught it just right and Tony choked on a breath, moaning into the kiss, ever so eager for more. 

In the middle of wandering hands and passionate kisses, that broken moan was all it took for Steve to pull back and look at Tony, searching for any sign of discomfort or change of heart. Tony wanted nothing more than to shake all these insecurities out of Steve, to remind him of all the reasons they had to trust each other. But Steve needed to see it for himself, so Tony relaxed under his assessing gaze, busied himself by tracing leisurely patterns over Steve’s lean back until the momentary fear faded from Steve’s expression. 

How Tony ever let him slip away before was a mystery best forgotten. 

“This is good,” Tony murmured under his breath, only loud enough for Steve’s ears. “I trust you, Steve, I still do. Anything changes, I’ll let you know. Okay?” 

Steve swallowed the last of his doubt and answered him with a subtle but certain nod. Tony smiled up at him, cupping his cheek with a hand to guide him back down for another kiss. One tender, adoring kiss skimmed into another, each more curious, more playful, more eager than the last until Steve had no reason to question how Tony felt for him. 

*** 

  
**Steve**  


Steve’s first clear thought when he woke up was that his head felt lopsided and disconnected from his body. He didn’t know where he was, how he’d gotten there, and his attempts to piece it together failed. A fog weighed on heavily him, smothering his senses. Steve scrambled to shake off the delusions detracting him from scraping together what happened to him, but reality was slippery and hazy, and his drug-addled thoughts quickly turned against him in mortal panic. 

Since his dusted memories and spiraling emotions stopped him from following the primary line of reasoning - when, where, who, how, why - Steve changed tact and focused on the physical space around him. Small, concrete facts he could build on. Using the smallest possible movements that hopefully wouldn’t alert anyone who might be watching, Steve determined that his hands were zip-tied behind his back and his ankles were tied with rope to something metallic. The room was cold - that kind of wet, freezing chill he could feel down to his bones - and to make matters worse, Steve could feel the slick gloss of the floor against his whole body, meaning that he’d been stripped naked. 

But what truly unnerved him was the silence. He couldn’t hear anything or anyone around him—not even the ever-present bustle of their living, breathing city. The only window he could see in any direction was a small, circular window near the ceiling, but it was too dark to tell if the distant sparks of light were from stars or tall buildings. 

Steve was caught up trying to remember why the shape and style of the window niggled at the back of his mind—it was recognizable; he knew it meant something, damnit!—when a thunderous crash barrelled overhead and the world dropped out from under him. In one heartbeat he hung weightless in the air, and in the next he collided against the floor as it swelled up to meet, clattering head-first against the hardwood like dead weight. His feeble grasp on consciousness blurred with the darkness encroaching on what little he’d clawed together. 

Soon his only lucid thought was a desperate hope that he’d at least told Tony he loved him before all this. They’d been so close to a second chance, so close to making up for all the time they lost being bullheaded. What Steve wouldn’t give to look Tony in the eyes again and admit how wrong he had been to let him go, for being so unsupportive. 

Distantly, Steve heard the dull clang of metal on metal followed by muffled stomping. This was it - whoever had captured him was there. His time was over. He tugged at the zip tie behind his back in a final attempt to get free, to have some means of defending himself, but his power was wasted by the drugs. 

But then he heard a snap and the tension in his shoulders suddenly eased and the unyielding plastic digging into his wrists fell away. Voices spoke over him, and Steve peeled his eyes open. Dark figures blurred into the darkness of his prison, but the one nearest him, the one touching him all over and helping him lie on his back, had short dark hair and a confidence that made Steve feel safe. 

“I love you,” he tried to say, because the world was well and truly fading and Tony needed to know before it was too late. “Love you so much.”

*** 

Steve’s first clear thought was everything felt pleasantly fuzzy. Everything was beautiful and wonderful and so sweet in his cocoon of delicious cotton candy. 

Cotton candy was the best. The whole world should be made of cotton candy, and then nobody would be homeless and nobody would go hungry because sugar is amazing and even clouds need love. 

“Steve?” 

That was his name, Steve thought. It was a good name, his mom gave him that name. Clouds of cotton candy swaddled him with love and comfort and his name, the world was such a beautiful place. 

He opened his eyes, and there was Tony - and Tony was smiling at him! His was such a beautiful smile - he looked so happy! - that Steve thought he could maybe share his cotton candy with him. 

“Christ—Steve, thank god,” Tony croaked out into Steve’s happy-tingling shoulder, and when he lifted his head again Steve could see the tears wet on his cheeks. 

Why was Tony sad? “Here,” Steve offered him some of his cotton candy cocoon, “you need cotton candy.” 

But Tony didn’t take the cotton candy! He put something in Steve’s mouth instead then peered at him like he was the last to know that nothing in the whole wide world was better than cotton candy. Steve would’ve reminded him if it wasn’t for the incredible water on his tongue, and he sucked on the straw for more - but Tony moved it away. 

“Easy, Steve—what’s; you’ll choke, babe,” Tony said in gentle, soothing words that Steve wanted to hug to his face and dance with forever. Tony’s voice was so beautiful and it was the best sound in the world. 

“A little at a time, okay?” then the straw was back against his lips. Tony looked really concerned but Steve wouldn’t break it, but he was very gentle with the straw anyway if it made Tony happy. Tony should always be happy. Why wasn’t he smiling again? 

“I leave you alone one day, one date, and you get kidnapped. Scared the shit out of me... how do you feel?” Tony asked with a worried expression that made Steve ache for him. 

He knew what Tony needed, so he offered it to him again. “Cotton candy!”

This time, Tony looked somewhat less confused, but he smiled at him again. A real smile, the ones that warmed Steve’s ears and made his toes curl with joy.

“They got you some good stuff there, babe,” he laughed softly and patted at Steve’s offered treasure. “You keep that, I’ll have some later, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve agreed, hugging his clouds of cotton candy. Cotton candy was amazing, but Tony looked happy again and Steve loved him so he had to trust him. 

But what if Tony was just being polite? “I love you,” he reminded Tony and pushed all his cotton candy at him. 

“Steve, what are you—”

All of it! Playing with cotton candy was so much fun, it was so soft and fluffy! And Tony was pushing it back at him, that was even more fun! They could play in the cotton candy forever and, see, Tony was even laughing now, his cotton candy was magical! 

“Stop—stop that, Steve! Steve, lie down!” Tony told him through the laughter, pushing Steve back into his sweet, fluffy nest and tucking him back into his cocoon. “Cotton candy is magical, yes, but you need to rest, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve smiled at him, relieved that Tony finally understood. 

Tony nestled in close, too. Steve wriggled his hand through the clouds of magic keeping him warm until he found Tony’s hand. Tony returned the squeeze and moved in even closer. Steve could even smell the salty brine in his hair. 

Since when did Tony smell like the Hudson? But Steve should never tell him; that was mean, the Hudson was absolutely filthy, and Steve loved him too much to say that. 

“I love you even when you smell like the Hudson,” he promised in case Tony was worried about it. 

Tony’s smile was like the sunshine on the perfect spring morning, like April 25th, when it's not too hot, not too cold, and all that was gloomy and dead came back to life with blooms and little fawn and bunnies play in the grass. 

“You do?” he asked, his eyes bright with affection and he was only looking at Steve! 

Steve was so fucking lucky. Until a nurse came into the room and Tony looked at her. She said something about how Steve shouldn’t have woken up and should be sleeping and Tony agreed with her—but Steve didn’t want to sleep with her! He wanted to sleep with Tony!

“You’re not attractive to me,” Steve told her with a snarl, and he squeezed Tony’s hand so Tony wouldn’t leave him with her. “I don’t like you.”

“I am so sorry,” he heard Tony apologizing—why was he apologizing! And she was laughing, what was happening? “He is going to be mortified later.”

All around him, his cotton candy hugged him again in fresh waves of painless peace. He was safe from her now, and he could feel Tony’s hand in his, and the world was so perfect and fuzzy and sweet. Sleep weighed on his eyes and quieted his thoughts, but Steve didn't want to go if Tony wasn't sleeping, too. 

“Hey, Steve?” he heard Tony whisper. “Can you hear me? We got him. You got him,” he said through water, and they were floating in sweet clouds and Steve wasn’t so sure what Tony meant but some part of him must have, because he felt the release of tension in his back and shoulders. _They did it. They got the bastard._

“Got’m?”

“You did it,” Tony assured him, and Steve purred when he felt the unmistakable touch of Tony’s lips on his forehead. “I love you back, Steve. I’ll be right here so rest now, and then you come home with me.”

“Home with you,” Steve echoed in agreement. That was where he wanted to be, back home where he could sleep in Tony’s arms and they were safe. Steve would never let all they’d built slip from his hands again without a fight, but for now, all Tony said he had to do was sleep. So he settled in, let go, and let sleep carry him home.


End file.
